Amsterdam

Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum

A short winter break in Amsterdam and the good fortune to be staying at a nice hotel right next to the tram stop for the  Rijksmuseum. With all the walking and the excitement my 3 year old daughter found it too much and fell asleep as we approached the huge canvas for The Night-Watch. I won't go into detail about this selection of paintings as you can find that elsewhere - but I do want to write about some of my impressions and what I could take from the visit in terms of helping me with my painting. So it's not an art history blog posting.

The Night Watch. Rembrandt

Anyway, the crowd for their prize painting was large but manageable. It's a painting with so much of significance going on that it needed time to scan the painting (my now sleeping daughter gave me that time, thankfully). The handy interpretation cards helped and one thing I will remember - apart from wondering how he managed to work on such a huge canvas - was that even Rembrandt had trouble with one aspect: the foreshortening of a sword /spear held by one of the watchmen. Strangely comforting.

The Jewish Bride surprised me because I'd forgotten it was one of his palette knife paintings. The impression of detail (close up it's quite rough) achieved is another example of his genius.

The Jewish Bride

The milkmaid. 

Vermeer is both serene and breathtakingly accurate in his drawing. More symbolism than I'd expected and vibrant colours.

A tired daughter being swapped between us

Winter Landscape. Avercamp

Avercamp was a new name to me, but it's a theme that was common to Holland: the winter scene. I loved spotting the little details of everyday life. The regional clothing and the mini dramas. He clearly had a lot of fun painting this one.

As an aside I also learned that travellers were often struck by the quality and quantity of paintings on display in Dutch homes, even amongst the less wealthy.

The ship one (artist unknown) was popular with visitors and difficult to photograph - hence the wonky framing by me. Perhaps ship paintings aren't as unfashionable as I'd presumed?



The Dutch impressionist paintings were less inspiring to me - or perhaps I was just tired by this stage but I found them a bit heavy handed and sometimes the colours were close to being a bit muddy. I liked this one though because it reminds me of our village in the winter.

Dutch impressionist winter landscape

The Arcadian scene with its ship and classical ruins and that gorgeous light transports me to an impossible landscape. I definitely understand the appeal of this genre and how beautifully executed (less so close up mind).

Arcadian imagery